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19 February 2025 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied
Prof Hagenmeier and Prof Jacobs
Prof Lynette Jacobs and Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier, one of her hosts at the Mittweida University of Applied Sciences (HSMW). Prof Jacobs, a visiting professor at this institution, had the opportunity to visit the HSMW on a guest scholarship grant from the State of Saxony.

Since its foundation in 1867, Mittweida University of Applied Sciences (HSMW) has had internationality as a trademark. In its early decades, more than half of its students came from abroad to study at this institution in Saxony, Germany. Today, the university is working with more than 100 partners worldwide, including the University of the Free State (UFS).

In September last year, the UFS signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), outlining the intention to collaborate on the exchange of academic staff and researchers for teaching, lectures, and research, as well as for the sharing of expertise. Additionally, the institutions are also looking at student exchange opportunities, conducting joint research projects, hosting symposia, seminars, and conferences together, and exchanging academic information and materials.

Internationalisation as a cross-cutting process

Recently, Prof Lynette Jacobs, the interim Director of the Office for International Affairs at the UFS, visited the institution as a visiting professor at the HSMW, after receiving a guest professorship grant from the Free State of Saxony in Germany.

This opportunity not only provided her with the chance to gain insight into the HSMW and build an understanding of the possibilities for collaboration between the two institutions but also allowed her to directly contribute to their strategy development. She worked on a research project with her hosts, Prof Ramona Kusche, Dean of Studies, Global Communications in Business and Culture, and Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier, Head of Internationalisation. “We responded to the question of the extent to which the HSMW has achieved the goals of its 2018 internationalisation strategy,” she says.

In this study, they found that the HSMW is known for its attractive study programmes, forward-thinking content, interactive approaches, and its innovativeness and agility. This is reflected in the views of staff and students who participated in the interviews and the survey. It also became clear that the HSMW’s internationalisation strategy intentionally draws on the character and strengths of the university, which has enabling structures and appropriate governance frameworks for internationalisation. She says this research provided her with an opportunity to reflect on the UFS’ institutional strategic plans for internationalisation and how to strengthen the strategy and its implementation.

Internationalisation strategies in a different context

“The engagement with the HSMW provided me with an important additional perspective for the internationalisation strategy revision process at the UFS,” she states, adding that spending time at the HSMW gave her a unique understanding of the development and implementation of internationalisation strategies in a different context.

Besides reviewing the HSMW’s 2018 internationalisation strategy, Prof Jacobs has also collaborated on other research projects. She co-authored both a Routledge book chapter and a manuscript of a scientific article by Prof Kusche, Dr Hagenmeier, and others. As a result of the contacts she made during her visiting professorship, she is also now involved in the guest-editing of a special issue of the journal Internationalisation of Higher Education – Policy and Practice with the theme Institutional Internationalisation Strategies in a Rapidly Changing Global Environment.

Prof Jacobs delivered a number of guest lectures during her stay in Saxony, for instance, ‘Different ways of knowing, being and relating’ (to master’s students) and ‘South African culture, Ubuntu and Pan-Africanism’ (to undergraduate students).  She furthermore engaged in various dialogue sessions and workshops with lecturers and researchers at the HSMW, focusing on the integration of international and intercultural dimensions in curricula or in their research. She participated in discussions with some young female academics on science and career development and contributed to an international workshop on Institutional Internationalisation Strategies in a Rapidly Changing Global Environment, where initial research findings were presented that will inform the strategy's upcoming revision.

The young but growing partnership between the UFS and the HSMW promises benefits for both institutions. Two complementary face-to-face internationalisation colloquium sessions are scheduled for 2025:  the first during the HSMW International Week in June, and the second on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus in September.  This will further deepen the collaboration, building a shared understanding of integrated internationalisation, contributing to scholarship of internationalisation, and enriching the academic and cultural exchange between the universities. Collaboration in terms of mentorship programmes between the two universities is on the cards, while specific departments at the UFS (e.g. the Department of Social Work and the Department of Facilities) have already started their collaboration in 2024.

For more information about partnerships, contact the Office for International Affairs at partnerships@ufs.ac.za.

News Archive

Renowned writer for Africa Day
2012-05-31

 

Attending the lecture were, from left: Dr Choice Makhetha, Vice-Rector: External Relations; Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies;Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong'o; Prof Lucius Botes, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, and Prof Andre Keet, Director of the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice..
Photo: Stephen Collett
25 May 2012

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Lecture: THE BLACKNESS OF BLACK: Africa in the World Today

Audio of the lecture

Profile of Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o (pdf format)

“Flowers are all different, yet no flower claims to be more of a flower than the other.” With these words Kenyan writer and one of the continent's most celebrated authors, Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, delivered the tenth annual Africa Day Memorial lecture on 25 May 2012 in the University of the Free State's (UFS) Odeion Theatre on the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies.

Long before Prof. wa Thiong’o was led inside the venue by a praise singer, chairs were filled and people were shown to an adjoining room to follow the lecture. Others, some on the university's Qwaqwa Campus, followed via live streaming.

In his speech titled the Blackness of Black: Africa in the world today, Prof. wa Thiong’o looked at the standing of Africa in the world today. He highlighted the plight of those of African descent who are judged “based on a negative profile of blackness”.

Prof. wa Thiong’o recalled a humiliating experience at a hotel in San Francisco in the United States, where a staff member questioned him being a guest of the hotel. He shared a similar experience in New Jersey, where he and his wife were thought to be recipients of welfare cheques. He said this was far deeper than overt racism.

“The certainty is based on a negative profile of blackness taken so much for granted as normal that it no longer creates a doubt.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o said the self certainty that black is negative is not confined to white perception of black only.

“The biggest sin, then, is not that certain groups of white people, and even the West as a whole, may have a negative view of blackness embedded in their psyche, the real sin is that the black bourgeoisie in Africa and the world should contribute to that negativity and even embrace it by becoming participants or shareholders in a multibillion industry built on black negativity.”

“Africa has to review the roots of the current imbalance of power: it started in the colonisation of the body. Africa has to reclaim the black body with all its blackness as the starting point in our plunge into and negotiations with the world.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o concluded by saying that Africa must rediscover and reconnect with Kwame Nkrumah’s dreams of a politically and economically united Africa.

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